Gesualdo, with all the force which a profound conviction that he speaks the truth lends to any speaker, wrestled for the soul of this dogged brute, and warned him of the punishment everlasting which would await him if he persisted in his refusal to surrender himself to justice. But he might as well have spoken to the great millstones at rest in the river-water. Why then had this wretch cast the burden of his vile secret on innocent shoulders? It was the most poignant anguish to him that he could awaken no sense of guilt in the conscience of the criminal. The man had come to him partly from a vague superstitious impulse, remnant of a credulity instilled into him in childhood, and partly from the want to _sfogare_ himself, as he called it,--to tell his story to some one,--which is characteristic of all weak minds in times of trouble and peril. It had relieved him to drag the priest into sharing his own guilty consciousness; he was half proud and half afraid of the manner in which he had slain his master, and bitterly incensed that he had done the deed for nothing; but beyond this he had no other emotion, except that he was glad that Generosa should suffer through and for it. "You will burn forever if you persist in such hideous wickedness," said Gesualdo again and again to him. "I will take my chance of that," said the man. "Hell is far off, and the galleys are near." "But if you do not believe in my power to absolve you or leave you accursed, why did you ever confess to me?" cried Gesualdo. "Because one must clear one's breast to somebody when one has a thing like that on one's mind," answered the Girellone, "and I know you cannot tell of it again." And from that position nothing moved him. No entreaties, threats, arguments, denunciations, stirred him a hair's-breadth. He had confessed _per sfogarsi_: that was all. But one night after Gesualdo had thus spoken to him, vague fears assailed him,--terrors material, not spiritual: he had parted with his secret: who could tell that it might not come out like a sleuth-hound and find him and denounce him? He had told it to be at peace, but he was not at peace. He feared every instant to have the hand of the law upon him. Whenever he heard the trot of the carabineers' horses going through the village, or saw the white belts and cocked hats of gendarmes in the sunlight of the fields, a cold tremor of terror seized him lest the priest should, after all, have told. He knew that it was impossible, and yet he was afraid.